Roll-fed printers are a well-known type of printers. In roll-fed printers, a recording medium such as paper is wound up on an input roll and then fed into, and guided along, a path through the printer, unwinding the input roll by and by along the process. In this way, the recording medium is roll-fed (i.e. taken from a roll and fed) to a marking unit of the printer which applies a marking material (prints) onto the recording medium
Roll-to-roll printers are a common type of roll-fed printers and are characterized in that the recording medium is, after images have been printed on it, wound up on an output holder of an output roll by and by along the process.
Some roll-fed printers comprise a cutting unit, i.e. a cutter, being configured to cut the recording medium after images have been printed on it such that the printer does not output the entire contiguous recording medium but instead cut pieces of it.
Some roll-fed printers comprise a laminating unit, i.e. a laminator, being configured to laminate the recording medium after images have been printed on it such that the robustness of the printed images is increased.
Roll-fed printers are very efficient devices for forming a large number of images requiring a large amount of the recording medium, as the wound-up input rolls are comparatively easy to handle by both the printers and their operating personnel. Accordingly, little or no supervision by personnel is needed for roll-fed printers, especially for roll-to-roll printers, as the marked recording medium is automatically stored on the output roll.
An event image object is defined as a digital object which is a user operable element. The digital object comprises a digital image, for example a thumbnail image, an icon, a text image or any other representable image. The image represents an event which may be an operator event or an apparatus event.
By allowing the operator to plan interventions by means of the event image objects, an image quality of the printed images and a production progress on the roll-fed printing apparatus may increase. The operator is allowed to drag event image objects to the image queue area. These event image objects may be planned in the print queue, i.e. these event image objects may be planned in between the digital representations of the ripped images.
Such an event image object may be dragged and dropped towards any position in the image queue area at any preferable moment. The result—what moment in time this intervention or warning will take place—is visible in the image queue area.
Reprinting of an image is quite common in the field of printing. However, reprinting an entire roll at once is not common in the field of printing. If there is a problem with print quality, this problem often affects the entire roll. The user has to plan the complete roll again with all its ripped images and its event image objects and finishing actions. In addition, when the problem does not affect the whole roll, an unadapted reprint of the roll may contain superfluous printed images which were already correctly printed at the first time. In case that the problem does not affect the whole roll, it usually concerns an area of the roll that contains more than one image.
It is desirable to have a method for controlling a roll-fed printing apparatus in a productive way that enables an operator of the roll-fed printing apparatus to be more flexible when reprinting an entire roll. It is also desirable to have a roll-fed printing apparatus capable of executing such a method.